Entanglement
by conquerorwurm
Summary: He was both alive and dead until someone opened the box.
1. Entanglement

**A/N:** This was written for the Portal Fic Exchange on Tumblr from a brilliant prompt by Honezuki.

This sort of a **choose-your-own adventure** story, though it really only has two options. Chapters 2 and 3 are the options you have to choose from. Hopefully it will make sense when you get to it!

* * *

The cracked panel catches her eye as soon as she enters the time-worn test chamber.

Without a second thought she dives for it and disappears into the facility's walls before her captor can react. Pistons shift and churn mindlessly around her, working to replace the faulty panel seconds too late.

She freezes as Her voice explodes in a sudden, piercing rage behind her only to be stifled by the new plate locking neatly into place.

Just as suddenly, She falls silent.

Crouched low in the tight space behind the panels, Chell clutches the Portal gun to her chest, shaking at the delayed rush of adrenaline flooding her limbs.

Minutes pass, and the unexpected calm stretches on, soundless but for the steady thumping of her own heart, near-deafening now in the absence of Her voice.

She struggles to make sense of Her silence.

She'd seen her pass through the cracked panel—She can probably _feel_ her within Her walls—but She hasn't yet made a move to recapture her prey.

The AI must be toying with her.

Chell winces at the prick of pain as her teeth break the skin of her upper lip.

The sharp taste lingers while she waits—for the panels to peel away from the wall all at once, for the rush of cold air upon her skin, for the cruel mockery of Her voice, for the grip of the robotic claw wrapped tight around her neck to drag her limp body back out of hiding—

Light spills into the narrow cavity from the test chamber as She pries a single panel from the wall nearby.

She falls back and away from the exposed area, Portal gun slipping from her grasp to clatter noisily against the floor behind her.

_**You can't hide forever, you know.**_

She rolls to retrieve it, hands scrabbling blindly at the floor as the panel slams haphazardly back into place.

_**You'll starve.**_

Another patch of harsh light, this one mere inches from her foot.

Her long-fall boot slides uselessly against the slick floor until it catches on a chance piece of metal framework and she kicks away from the light with a single, painful push.

_**Oh, it'll take a long time, I'm sure.**_

The second panel crashes back into place, crumbling under the weight of the blow.

_**But it **_**will**_** happen.**_

Her legs are numb, her arms infuriatingly weak at her sides.

_**What's the matter? Did that fat little body of yours get wedged in the panel machinery?**_

With a sudden flare of defiance she throws a hand out to wrap around another metal support, heaving herself forward and just out of Her sight as a third panel flies open.

_**You might as well stop now, you know.**_

Drawing her legs up beneath her, she pushes away from the light, dodging the suddenly active machinery behind the wall as the panels open and close around her with mounting speed.

_**I'm going to find you.**_

She stumbles forward through the darkness, barely out of reach of the shifting panels, until she crashes into something solid and falls back to pat and claw frantically at it, to push it away, to break through it, but it resists.

Her skin goes cold at the realization of what it was she'd hit.

The wall at the end of the test chamber.

She wrenches her body around, searching for another escape even as the pattern of light cast by the shifting panels catches up with her.

_**There you are…**_

Her eyes snap to a faint glow beside her—there is a break in the inner wall, a hole perhaps large enough for a person to fit through. Shoving the Portal gun in before herself, she squeezes through to the other side and rolls out of sight just as the final panel flings itself away from the outer wall.

She holds her breath even after the panel slams shut with a resounding crash.

Minutes pass in silence as Chell waits for Her response, but she can hear no further sound from the test chamber.

Slumping forward, she gasps desperately to return the air missing from her lungs, her hand pressed to her chest.

A wild, wicked grin spreads across her lips at the triumph of her narrow escape.

She allows herself only a few seconds of victory before she lifts her head to observe the unfamiliar area.

Tucked away behind the test chamber, the alcove is little more than a small pocket of negative space lit from above by a single flickering light bulb. Oddly, a torn mattress fills much of the hidden room, and the scant floorspace is barely visible for the mess of familiar-looking cans surrounding it. Her stomach rumbles with a sudden, powerful surge of something she'd taught herself to forget long before.

She puzzles at the scene only briefly, but she can think of no logical reason for the food or the bedding hidden between the walls.

For a moment Chell considers that they might have been left there for her.

She dismisses the thought as absurd.

As her stomach begins to protest its emptiness she kneels to rummage through the cans to find one still unopened. Snatching up the first she can find, she bends the tab, tears off the top, and plunges her hand inside.

Though it isn't particularly appetizing, the food calms a part of her she rarely has the chance to calm.

When she is satisfied, she wraps a thin, tattered blanket around her bare shoulders and lies down on the grimy, stain-covered mattress.

For a few fitful hours she tosses restlessly, the adrenal vapor in her lungs keeping her painfully, maddeningly conscious, but in time she slips away from herself and into sleep.

* * *

"_—sorry. I'm so sorry._"

A soft voice reaches her, hesitant and unfamiliar.

Chell struggles to open her eyes. A flicker of panic stings her chest when her body fails to respond.

The situation is clear enough—she'd let her guard down only moments after escaping Her, had allowed herself to be recaptured and dragged to yet another relaxation chamber. For all her effort she is lost again, thrust back into the space between sleep and consciousness.

She can do nothing but wait.

"_You never asked for this, I know."_

The voice again, louder and stronger—obviously male, now that she can hear it better, but still unfamiliar.

_"None of us did._"

Whoever he is, however he'd come to find her in her new relaxation chamber, he seems desperate to communicate with her, but she is powerless to respond.

"_—had only __**listened**__ to me, but it was already too late—too late—there was nothing we could do—_"

There is no hint of contempt or condescension, no crackle of static or metal in this new voice. It is warm and calming to her ears, and though his words are tinged with a deep sadness, she finds the sound of them oddly reassuring.

"_We should have known. We should have seen it coming, should have stopped it earlier, but—_"

The voice fades into silence.

An eternity passes before he speaks again.

"_It doesn't matter now._"

A foreign touch grazes the arm resting limply at her side.

"_You're the only one. It has to be you._"

Warm fingers curl to wrap tightly around her hand.

"_Forgive me._"

* * *

First there is light, then movement.

With a sudden burst of energy she is upright, casting her eyes around herself to find the man—but she is still alone, still nestled in the space between the test chambers.

She sighs, rubbing her empty hand as the man's words echo in her mind.

_The only one._

Apart from the personality core now lying crushed on the floor of Her central chamber, the voice from her dream had been the only friendly sound she could remember hearing in Aperture. For a few seconds she considers lying back down to seek him out again, but she quickly shakes herself from the fantasy.

Ignoring the ache of the scrapes and bruises she'd gained in her most recent escape, she stands and fits her hand into the comforting grip of the Portal gun. With a final glance around her strange nest, she slips into the narrow corridor leading away from the area.

Though her ears are pricked for any sign that her captor has resumed Her pursuit, she can hear nothing apart from her own footsteps and the slow drip of water pooling in some neglected space nearby.

She moves forward.

The corridor splits more times than she can count as it winds between and around the maze of test chambers. The thought that she might be walking in circles—that she might never find her way out of the walls—lingers in the back of her mind as the hours crawl past in the cramped, airless passage.

As she rounds a corner, a subtle change in her surroundings catches her attention.

The air around her, once stale and dead, is in motion now, flowing in a cool, gentle breeze on her face and bare arms. Pushing against the moving air, she presses forward down a long corridor toward a four-way intersection.

To her left she can see light.

She runs until she finds herself suddenly free of the confines of the test chambers' walls, skidding to a halt just before she tumbles over the edge of the catwalk suspended outside. A choking mist from below blurs her vision and obscures the structures in the distance from her view, but she is too grateful to be in open space to mind.

From outside, the pale, water-streaked walls of the immense testing facility offer no hint of the horrors within.

Chell moves on, following the catwalk as it skirts the edges of the outermost test chambers to terminate at a structure beside the facility.

Appproaching the door cautiously, she peers inside to find nothing more than an empty corridor. Satisfied that the new area is neither a relaxation vault nor a test chamber, she pushes through and sets off down the hallway.

She moves through the darkened corridors as quietly as she can manage, wincing as the unavoidable tapping of her long-fall boots against the floor pierces the stillness. The echoes of her footsteps set her on edge—even in these long-abandoned halls she still can't shake the feeling of pursuit, though there is still no evidence she is being followed.

As her thoughts begin to wander to the food she'd left hidden between the test chambers, she trips over something on the floor and nearly falls, though her long-fall boots keep her awkwardly upright. The something she'd tripped on clatters noisily away, crashing against a wall and rolling to disappear around a corner.

Intrigued, she retrieves the item, but the label printed on the small metal cylinder is too worn and faded to read. She sets it back on the floor, glancing up as she stands.

She freezes in place, her eyes wide.

Wild, fevered markings cover every surface of the secluded corridor—bright splashes of color, twisting and coiling around each other with a near-palpable frenzy. The delirious forms give the unnerving illusion of life and movement to the dead hallway, though the silence surrounding her suggests it is a life long past.

She stares until she begins to see patterns in the designs.

Stepping forward into the hallway, she cranes her neck to study the nonsense words and strings of numbers scrawled on the walls around her. The markings instantly call to her mind those that had once guided her through her first attempt at escape, though these hold no message she can decipher.

In a few steps the words dissolve into unidentifiable symbols, then crudely sketched shapes and misshapen forms, disjointed suggestions of images her eyes can't quite interpret—

She halts suddenly before symbols that are more unsettlingly familiar.

A cube.

A button.

An enormous mechanical contraption, its bulk hanging heavily from supports somewhere far above.

Chell shivers at the sight of Her single glowing eye.

Surrounding Her coiled form is an army of turrets, their blood-red beams trained together on one unlucky spot. Their target is a man dressed in white, his tiny, folded form cowering pathetically under the weight of Her gaze, one hand raised as if to shield himself from Her deadly sight.

His wide eyes are strange, she notices. Mismatched.

One is blue, the other black.

She leaves the unsettling image of the nameless man's distress to stand beneath the largest and most elaborate image in the corridor—that of a woman clad in a bright jumpsuit much like her own, her arms raised at her sides.

Chell pauses to consider the painstaking care that had been taken to depict the slight curve of the woman's full lips, the rosy tint of her cheeks, the strands of dark hair framing her face. Her eyes are closed in an eternal sleep—or perhaps recent death, she reflects grimly.

She reaches out to touch the cold surface, her fingertips smearing a part of the woman's jumpsuit, and pulls her hand back to rub the dry orange powder between her fingers.

Taking a small piece of orange chalk from the floor, she moves to fill in the spot her touch had left, but quickly stops herself.

She turns on her heel to leave the corridor behind.

The painted hallway lingers in Chell's mind as she passes through areas pale and lifeless in comparison. The words had been unintelligible, the numbers useless, but the images—

The images had been familiar.

She'd seen the woman not long before. It had been her figure reigning over the elaborate works of art hidden beneath the decayed testing track, a vision of peace and quiet strength amid the chaos of the artist's depictions of the violent end of Aperture Science.

But who had she been?

Her clothing had suggested a test subject, but her smile had suggested an individual—not a number, not a point of data, but a real person.

A swell of envy for the nameless woman rises in her before she can suppress it.

She must have been someone important to have been immortalized like that. She'd mattered enough to the artist, at least, to have been captured and preserved in the facility long past her natural lifetime.

Had anybody ever considered Chell worth preserving?

Or even worth _remembering?_

If they had, perhaps she never would have ended up in Aperture in the first place.

She pushes the thought from her mind.

The artist, the same person who had nearly led her to freedom so long before, had seemingly spent their days frantically peppering the facility with evidence that, for at least a brief period of time, some life had survived the fall of Aperture.

But had they ever managed to escape themselves, or had they died within the facility's walls?

She pushes on—for minutes or days, she can no longer tell.

As she nears the end of another featureless hallway, a cool blue light draws her attention, though it registers in her scattered thoughts only belatedly.

There is a faint illumination spilling out from beneath an unmarked door to light the dim corridor.

The presence of the clearly electrical glow in an otherwise dark area of the facility gives her pause. It would be a shockingly obvious trap, especially for Her.

Chewing her lip in thought, she studies the sliver of light on the concrete floor.

After a few moments she trots back to the door and stands before it. She can hear a soft, mechanized hum coming from inside the room.

The sound is strangely calming.

Nudging the door open with her long-fall boot, she leans forward to peek inside. The room is lit an eerie, pale blue—

Her grip tightens on the door as her eyes fall on the source of the unnatural light resting against the far wall.

A long-term relaxation pod.

Chell steps inside and closes the door behind herself—to what end she is not sure, but it seems the right thing to do—then drops into a crouch and creeps slowly toward the sealed capsule.

The low hum that fills the room grows louder with every step.

She casts a nervous glance around herself, but the trap has not yet sprung.

Her pulse quickens as she closes in on the capsule and its steady, near-hypnotic hum. Perfectly functional mechanical equipment in Aperture has never been a reassuring sight.

Her long-fall boot slips beneath her and she throws out a hand to catch herself. On the floor surrounding the capsule is a mess of loose paper—in the low light she can just make out dense charts, strings of numbers, and long blocks of text.

Lifting herself onto her knees beside the pod, she peers inside.

She can't quite remember ever having seen another human up close. She knows that she must have met at least one in her life—might have even lived among them at some point—but after two rounds of extended cryosleep the face of a human is as foreign to her as the world outside of Aperture.

A shock of wild, matted black hair surrounds his thin face. His cheeks are desperately hollow and his skin shockingly pale, though sickly rings of a dark blue border his sunken eyes. Even in sleep he seems troubled, his face worn with creases of anxiety and marred with scars both faint and fresh.

Her hand lifts reflexively to trace the length of one of her own, an old one but deep, its pain long faded.

This man, whoever he might have been, had been a fighter—just like her.

But he isn't wearing a jumpsuit. His outfit is different, a dingy grey that might once have been white. The torn and tattered cloth covers nearly every inch of his skin.

Given his physical condition, she can't imagine he'd ever been a test subject—but what else could he have been? And how had he come to rest here, tucked deep in the heart of the facility and far away from the test chambers?

She leans closer to the glass to take in the sight of him, scanning his body up and down.

On one leg, a patch of deep crimson—blood, likely fresh given its color. But how long could he have rested there?

One thin arm is held rigidly at his side while the other is draped across his chest, rising and falling with the slight disturbance of his slow breaths.

His hands are dusted with color, the cloth beneath his fingers smudged orange and blue.

Her eyes stray to the her own stained fingertips then back to his.

Her breath catches in her throat.

She never thought she'd have a chance to meet him, to thank him for what he'd done for her. Even while following in his footsteps she hadn't even fully believed that he'd ever truly existed outside of her own fevered mind—

Yet here he is in flesh like hers, more than just a few cryptic words scrawled in some hidden corner, more than a memory hidden beneath faded chalk and peeling paint.

A flutter of movement at the seam of the cryopod glass draws her out of her thoughts. A sheet of paper is trapped beneath the glass resting over him—likely has been for years—Chell reaches out to tear the loose paper free and hold it up to the cold light.

Clipped to it is a small photograph of a woman—_the_ woman, she realizes with a start. The woman the artist had fought so desperately to preserve. Her lips are curled in a slight frown, and her eyes, now open, are a stark and unsettlingly pale grey.

A spark of something fierce—anger? defiance?—rests behind her cold eyes.

The artist had never quite captured that.

She glances back at the man still resting in the cryopod.

In the reflection of the glass she can still see the nameless woman, her sharp eyes wide in a shock she recognizes as her own.

The woman in the corridor.

The woman beneath the testing track.

The woman who had _mattered_, the one the artist had cared enough for to preserve, the silent, motionless ruler of all the corridors and panels whose surfaces she'd unknowingly graced—

It was her.

Her eyes fall on him again. He had celebrated her—_immortalized_ her—but for what purpose she couldn't fathom.

She searches the angles and lines of his gaunt face, but she has no memory of him.

Yet if she had once meant something to him, perhaps he had once meant something to her.

He had saved her—or had tried his best to, guiding her out of the testing track and toward freedom. He had taken care of her when she'd been certain she was the only human left in existence. He had risked his own life to make sure she knew that she wasn't alone.

Her hand hovers over the capsule release button.

His chest rises and falls.

Though the relaxation pod had long since stemmed his bleeding, she isn't sure what being brought out of stasis might do to his wound. But he is trapped in the facility, likely had been for years already, with no hope of rescue but Chell, and he had helped her before.

He had _known_ her before.

And he might know her still.

The cryopod seal breaks with a slight hiss of air.


	2. Ending 1

The glass panel lifts to release the man inside, but there is no movement from within the capsule.

His hand is limp and cold in hers.

She waits patiently for him, counting the seconds that pass before his waking.

In time he finally stirs, inhaling sharply, a thin sound punctuated by a weak cough that rattles his narrow frame.

His body goes still beneath her touch.

She lifts her hand to pat at his face—perhaps waking is difficult for him.

His skin is ice against her fingertips.

She leans over him, grasping his thin shoulders in her hands and holding them tight. She shakes him, softly at first, then harder, but still he doesn't wake.

She lowers him gently to rest within his capsule.

Her eyes are wide, wet, and unfocused as they fall on his face.

It's him.

It _has_ to be him.

His face is unfamiliar, but still she is certain now, in some desperate, frantic part of herself, that she knows him, that he knows her, and that his were the hands that had recreated her image on Aperture's walls while she had slept.

She slaps him, her fingertips leaving bright streaks of orange powder across his turret-pale cheek.

But still he doesn't wake.

She places a palm on his chest and presses down.

There is no heartbeat.

For a moment she is too struck by the shock of the situation to move. He'd been breathing—he'd been _right there_—and now he is simply…

Gone.

He is silent and small tucked within his capsule, no more animate than any other inoperative machine in the facility.

Her throat aches with a deep-welling sadness—for him, the artist, the man she had never known yet who had somehow known her.

She shakes her head, backing away from the capsule and the withered, empty body it holds.

_I'm sorry._

Her long-fall boots stumble over the stack of papers she'd left on the floor. She digs a boot beneath the pile to kick it away but stops as her eyes wander over the rest of the floor. Rather than a chaotic mess of paper, she can see now the trail of it clearly leading from the door to the capsule.

What had the artist been doing before entering stasis?

She kneels to snatch up a handful of the sheets.

_Chell [Redacted]._

She swallows hard at the sight of her own name.

_Test subject._

Flipping through the papers, she can see her name on each, but not much else. Nearly every page is unreadable, streaked with lines of black ink and covered with scrawlings of that same word.

Redacted, redacted, redacted.

It seems Aperture had tried to 'redact' her very existence.

She tosses the papers away and kneels to pick through the rest.

Her name still, on every half-obscured sheet. Perhaps these were the scattered remains of her testing file—but how had the artist come into possession of it?

She pauses over a sheet oddly free of redaction.

Beside her name, a chart—a curve of some kind, with notation she can't interpret, and beneath, in bright red:

_Rejected._

_DO NOT TEST._

She reads the words again and again.

_DO NOT TEST._

_DO NOT TEST._

_**DO NOT TEST.**_

The paper is smudged orange and blue.

Her hands shake as she stands to regard the dead man once more.

Her gut aches miserably at the sight of him.

She had been rejected for testing, yet she had still been tested—by this artist, this_scientist_ she has no memory of.

What she had held as messages from an unseen savior must have been nothing more than experimental variables, conditions designed to pick at her brain, to manipulate her, to propel her forward, all in the service of some cruel imitation of scientific progress.

A harsh laugh rises in her throat.

It seems somehow fitting. Her rebellion, her battle with her supposed tormentor, her near-escape from Aperture.

It had all been a test.

Why else would she have ended up back in a relaxation chamber after it all?

The scientist must have survived Her downfall, if only to capture Chell again and to hide her away until he was ready for her next test. The art in the corridor had been nothing more than the result of an unhealthy mind gone mad with hunger, not the product of any kind of admiration, or friendship, or love.

She should have known. She should have seen it coming—but it doesn't matter now.

Her gaze lingers on the steadily-darkening patch of blood on his thigh. In the end, he must have been caught by a bullet from a stray turret.

She can't help but regret that she hadn't been there to witness it.

Turning away from the scientist, she makes her way toward the door.

Though she does not mourn for him, she spares a moment's thought for the man he never was.

She had been alone throughout testing and alone ever since. His messages had given her hope, and perhaps at the time she had needed them—had needed _him_—to make it through.

She pushes the door open.

There will be no more messages to guide her, she knows, and no more illusions of a kind hand from above.

But she is stronger now.

And she can find her own way out.


	3. Ending 2

The glass panel lifts to release the man inside, but there is no movement from within the capsule.

His hand is limp and warm in hers.

She waits patiently for him, counting the seconds that pass before his waking.

In time he finally stirs, inhaling sharply, a thin sound punctuated by a weak cough that rattles his narrow frame.

He takes another slow breath, then another.

His eyes open—one is blue, the other black.

A low groan rises in his chest as he struggles to sit up.

She greets him with an embrace, drawing his thin shoulders into her arms and holding him tight. He tenses at the touch and pushes back feebly against her.

She lowers him gently to rest within his capsule.

His eyes are wide, wet, and unfocused as they fall on her face.

"It's you_._"

It's him.

She can barely hear his whisper, but she would recognize his voice anywhere.

He begins to babble, half-mad in his excitement.

"It's you, it's _you_, I can't believe it's really…"

She smiles.

"How—how did you—" he stutters, glancing frantically around the room. "Where are we?"

She places a palm on his chest to hold him down. It won't do to allow him to exert himself so soon after waking—she knows from experience that he will need time to recover.

"Chell, _where are we?_"

For a moment she is too struck by the sound of her name on another person's lips to respond. He knows her, he _does_—but her relief is cut short by his expectant stare.

She points to her mouth and shakes her head.

"What does that—oh." He breathes in through his teeth. "…you can't speak, can you?"

She shakes her head again.

"I'm sorry—" his voice falters. He won't meet her gaze. "No. Not right now. There's time. There will be time, I'll tell you everything, I promise—then you can decide what to do with me."

Chell has no time to ponder his odd wording as he quickly proceeds.

"But right now—right now we have to get moving."

He sits up beneath her hand then hisses in pain, clutching at his leg. A fresh patch of blood has already begun to seep through the fibers of his clothing. She shakes her head and unravels the wrappings on her wrist to tie them tight around the wound.

He goes still beneath her touch and watches her work with a quiet awe.

When she is finished he speaks again.

His voice, though soft, fills the room with warmth.

"Tell me, is—is—" he pauses to breathe, deep and slow, perhaps still faint from either pain or waking. "Is _she_ still… out there?"

Chell nods.

He nods silently in response.

She kneels to take a stray paper from the floor and fishes the chalk out of her pocket. He watches her without blinking, as though convinced she would somehow disappear if he were to look away.

She thinks for a long moment—there are so many things she wants to tell him, to ask him—but decides on two simple words.

She etches the letters carefully onto the paper and holds it up for him to see.

_Thank you_

His brow creases.

"Th-thank you? For _what?_"

Chell turns away to scrawl a response, messier this time in her haste to erase the look of worry from his face.

_For helping me_

The ghost of a smile passes over his lips but quickly fades.

"How did—how did you know that was me?"

This message she writes slowly and with painstaking care.

_You're the only one_

She pauses, then adds:

_It has to be you._

His mouth curls in a silent 'oh' before settling into another smile.

In a few moments he is strong enough to stand. She slides her arm beneath his, maneuvering him toward the edge of the capsule and carefully lifting him to the ground.

His body is feather-light in her arms.

He bares his teeth as his bad leg makes contact with the ground, but she pulls him close, and he leans his weight on her.

"We might—we might need to go slowly. I'm sorry," he admits, then adds quietly:  
"…for everything."

She squeezes his chalk-dusted hand in her own as she guides him carefully to the door.

"But it's alright," he continues. "It's going to be alright. You're here and you're safe, and—and we're together now, and—"

She pushes the door open.

"—I know the way out."


End file.
